Film Reviews
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl review - an old foe returnsWednesday, 18 December 2024
It’s difficult to believe that the last stop-motion Wallace and Gromit short graced our screens way back in 2008. Describing the pair’s new outing as a return to form is unnecessary: this duo never lost it in the first place. Read more... |
Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes review - a Hollywood legend, warts and allSaturday, 14 December 2024
It might be a push to call this documentary a feminist slant on Humphrey Bogart, but it wouldn’t quite be a shove. Northern Irish filmmaker Kathryn Ferguson’s work has often concerned itself with identity and gender politics, and her narrative here is framed around the women in Bogart’s life, starting with his aloof, undemonstrative mother, Maud. Read more... |
Sujo review - cartels through another lensSaturday, 14 December 2024
It’s not often we hear barely a single gunshot in a movie set amid Mexican drug cartels, but that may be the way it is for people who actually live amid Mexican drug cartels. In Sujo, Mexico’s bid for the next foreign feature Oscar, we experience violence the way many who inhabit violent places actually experience it – mostly embedded in the fabric of life, only occasionally directly. Read more... |
Queer review - Daniel Craig meets William BurroughsFriday, 13 December 2024
Judging by a Sunday Times interview last weekend, Daniel Craig now enjoys wearing brilliantly-coloured sweaters and extraordinary trousers, very much like a man running as fast as possible in the opposite direction to James Bond. He has goodbye-Bond-esque quotes to go with it. Read more... |
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim review - a middling return to Middle-earthThursday, 12 December 2024
Lauded by Auden, detested by Edmund Wilson, the Tolkien sagas have divided many from childhood onwards: for kids, they’re not quite pulpy enough to be the first choice for a Halloween costume, for grown-ups not quite literary enough to be literary. |
The Commander review - the good ItalianTuesday, 10 December 2024
Patriotic Italian films set during the Fascist war effort are understandably rare UK releases. Submarine commander Salvatore Todaro (Pierfrancesco Favino) was, though, an honourable warrior-poet who director Edoardo De Angelis seeks to separate from wider currents. Read more... |
Nocturnes review - the sounds of the rainforest transport you a remote region of the HimalayasMonday, 09 December 2024
If you suffer from lepidopterophobia, this film will either cure your fear of moths or push you over the edge. Warning: the screen is often filled with moths of every shape, size, colour and pattern while the sound of flapping, fluttering and girating wings fills the air to the point where you feel bombarded by the flying, furry creatures. Read more... |
Merchant Ivory review - fascinating documentary about the director and producer's long partnershipSaturday, 07 December 2024
“Shoot, Jim, shooot!” Simon Callow does a fine impression of producer Ismail Merchant desperately trying to get director James Ivory to bring urgency to the proceedings. The received wisdom was that Ismael thought Jim was going to bankrupt Merchant Ivory Productions commercially by insisting on perfection, while Jim was sure that Ismael would bankrupt it artistically by insisting on every possible economy. Read more... |
Grand Theft Hamlet review - intriguing documentary about Shakespeare as multi-player shooter gameFriday, 06 December 2024
On July 4, 2022, one of the most unusual performances in Hamlet’s lengthy and much travelled CV took place: an in-game stream for players of the blockbuster Grand Theft Auto (GTA). Read more... |
Nightbitch review - Mother's life as a dogFriday, 06 December 2024
Rachel Yoder says she wrote her debut novel Nightbitch as a reaction to Donald Trump’s first term as President, with what she saw as its consequent mood-shift in America towards “traditional values and women staying home, taking care of the kids.” Read more... |
Rumours review - pallid satire on geopoliticsFriday, 06 December 2024
It must have seemed such a delicious premise – a Buñuel-esque comedy about world leaders trapped at a luxury retreat as the apocalypse looms. With cult director and installation artist Guy Maddin directing alongside his regular collaborators Galen and Evan Johnson, one can understand why Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, and the rest of the starry cast signed up for Rumours. Read more... |
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl review - mordant seriocomedy about buried abuseThursday, 05 December 2024
The writer-director of 2017’s I Am Not a Witch, Rungano Nyoni, has come up with another scorcher, this time taking aim at Zambia’s social structures, in which women’s power can become petty tyranny. Nyoni’s Zambian scenarios are populated with “aunties” and “uncles” and the occasional “grandma”. These titles designate the elders of the kinship group, the leaders who speak for the rest. Read more... |
Conclave review - secrets and lies in the Vatican's inner sanctumSaturday, 30 November 2024
“You either got faith or you got unbelief, and there ain’t no neutral ground,” as Bob Dylan sang, but Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) isn’t finding it quite that simple. Read more... |
All We Imagine as Light review - tender portrait of three women struggling to survive in modern MumbaiThursday, 28 November 2024
The Indian writer-director Payal Kapadia scored this year’s Cannes Grand Prix with her first fiction film, All We Imagine as Light, which follows three women trying to make a living in modern Mumbai. It’s a deserving winner, both exquisitely delicate and formally bold. Read more... |
Witches review - beyond the broomstick, the cat, and the pointy hatTuesday, 26 November 2024
From James I’s campaign to wipe out witchery to the feuding sister sorceresses of The Wizard of Oz and the new film musical Wicked, spellcasting by supposedly wayward women has never been able to avoid persecution and misunderstanding. Read more... |
Wicked review - overly busy if beautifully sung cliffhangerSaturday, 23 November 2024
"No one mourns the wicked," we're told during the immediately arresting beginning to Wicked, which concludes two hours 40 minutes later with the words, "to be continued" flashed up on the screen. Will filmgoers mourn that they have to wait an entire year to see the second part of this supercharged screen adaptation of the stage musical blockbuster that London and New York audiences can currently absorb in a single sitting? Read more... |
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